


Oh Very Young

by schweinsty



Category: Nerve (2016)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 10:32:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8098780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweinsty/pseuds/schweinsty
Summary: Sam saw a kid fall to his death, ended up with his family in tatters, and watched Vee get shot right in front of him.You don't go through all of that and come out fine.





	

Sam ends up staying with her, once Vee heads off to California, just for a couple of weeks. Things with his family are still rough, even after three months, and Nancy offers her son's bedroom until he gets back on his feet, in exchange for helping her clean it out.

The first night, she wakes up to the sound of someone crying.

For a moment she thinks it's Vee—thinks it's two years ago, the month after the funeral, when Vee cried herself to sleep every night. Nancy's out the door before it clicks that Vee's almost three thousand miles away, and the person crying in her kitchen is the boy she barely knows (and who she's still a little angry at, and who she's starting to love despite that, because he's not her son—she knows he's not—but he is kind and good like her boy was).

He's facing the counter, hunched over the electric kettle, one arm wrapped around his stomach and one hand covering his eyes, just sort of quietly sobbing to himself. She can tell when he hears her because his shoulders hunch up, his back stiffens, and the crying abruptly cuts off.

“Couldn't sleep?” Nancy asks. She passes him by and grabs the milk from the fridge. “Grab me a mug, will you?”

He does, wordlessly. She pretends not to notice him wiping his eyes with the palm of his hands and stirs some chocolate syrup into her milk. She sets it in the microwave.

“I, uh,” he starts, and she can see him eyeing the door already. “I should go back to bed. Didn't mean to wake you. You've got work in the mor—”

“Nuh-uh.” Nancy bodily blocks him as he tries to skulk out and nods over to the table. “Have a seat.”

Sam sits. He looks down at the table and interlaces his fingers.

Nancy pours herself a cup of hot water from the kettle and adds a slice of lemon. The bag of caffeinated tea Sam had out, she puts away. In front of him she settles instead the cup of hot chocolate with steam curling out from it. He frowns a little, but doesn't complain.

He's thin—thinner than he should be, even as lean as his body naturally tends. He's, what, nineteen? Twenty, if he's had a birthday since they met. Still so young, and having spent most of the last year in a constant state of stress.

She draws out the chair across from him and settles into it.

“You should drink up,” she says. “Milk has tryptophan in it. It's what makes you drowsy after you eat turkey at Thanksgiving.”

Sam shrugs, but he takes a sip. “Never had turkey,” he mumbles. “My parents are vegetarians.”

Nancy 'hmmm's and blows on her lemon-water. “Well, it'll help you sleep.”

Sam catches the edge of his table mat in his fingers and rubs at it. “Thanks.”

He still won't look up.

“You know,” she starts. She takes a drink. It scalds her tongue. “After—after we lost my son, Vee had a lot of trouble sleeping too. I'd find her out here at two, three in the morning almost every night.”

“I'm fine,” he says, and he does look up then, red-eyed and splotchy-faced and looking like hell. “I'm not—I didn't lose anyone. I'm just—I'm fine.”

“Uh-huh.” She takes another drink, slower this time, and feels the water warm its way down her throat. “Vee said your sister attempted suicide after her pictures were hacked. Is that right?”

He looks back down and takes a long, deep breath. Another. Another, that shudders at the end.

“And you watched that boy die, in Seattle, and you watched Vee get shot and die right in front of you.” And that—that twists in her gut and makes her feel like throwing up, remembering her little floor flop onto the grass with blood on her chest, but she sets the nausea aside, because someone in front of her is hurt and it's her life's work to heal. “That's trauma, Sam. It's normal to have it affect you. Heck, I'd be worried if you were fine.”

Sam cups his hands around the back of his neck. Nancy can't see his face, but she hears the plunk of several drops hit the floor between his feet.

“It's all right,” she says. “It's not weak.”

Sam's finger press against his skin in white-knuckled tension. He holds his breath for a count of four and releases.

Nancy wonders how much practice he's had, the last year, at keeping himself from breaking.

“You're going to go get some more sleep,” she says. “And in the morning you can come to work with me, and we can get you started on getting your insurance situation figured out so you can talk to someone, okay?”

“I'm fine,” Sam says. He shakes his head. “I'll be—I'm fine. I don't—it's my fault. It's my fault.”

“Oh, honey,” she says. She sets her hand on his shaking back and, God, he's thin, so thin, he left home after the first game and for the first time it crosses her mind to wonder what he did and how he lived and whether he had enough to eat, or if this sharp-edged boniness under her palm was just another form of punishment he gave himself.

“It's not your fault,” she says, and means it.

He breaks down, then. Leans against her, eventually, forehead smashed against the table and his hands over his face and his whole body hunched over and shaking.

It's not his fault, she tells him. Maybe joining the game was stupid, but he tried to do the right thing, both times, and what happened to his family and him was far, far out of proportion to any idiot mistake he made. She tells him Vee got herself in it, made her own choices, tells him making himself miserable won't make anyone else feel better.

He doesn't believe her, not yet, but he doesn't say no when she tells him she'll wake him up early tomorrow, and he gives her a hug and a very red-faced thanks after he calms down and takes his hot chocolate with him when he heads back to bed.

Nancy takes several deep breaths and listens to someone who isn't her son settling down in her son's bedroom, and she throws out her lemon-water and makes herself a cup of tea.


End file.
